But you could have all the other elements -- consideration, for instance, and mutual benefit.
Whether or not someone will willingly agreeing to something is a different issue from whether or not the contract is of a legal or illegal nature.
Slavery is a good example -- at one point, someone could have sold themselves into slavery. And then suddenly that contract might be determined to be illegal, if slavery was banned.
180Solutions is always right on the line. They used to play really dirty, until it was illegal.
Then they did the arms-length thing: blame the affiliates, but encourage them to break the law.
I don't see how their behavior is any different from companies that mislead people as to what they are buying or signing (e.g. I'll give you a check for a dollar -- but it is also a contract that switches your long distance service to may carrier).
Some people are stupid. Our laws assume that people are responsible and that if they sign a contract, that is them willingly singing a contract.
I suspect the problem is that some people are so stupid that they aren't really responsible, and that is especially the case when it comes to computers running spyware.
Transformers are equally culpable of silently sipping power. I've read that 10% of a households energy use is from transformers.
That they use power is obvious if you look at the electrical diagram -- the things have a loop through which current travels. There is some waste power that gets lost.
Do we all go around the house unplugging our transformers, to stop from using power? I doubt it.
I figure that my electronic devices, with their "waste heat" are actually heating my place. I don't see that as a bad thing -- I want the heat.
If, on the other hand, I had to run AC to cool down the building, then I'd be peeved at them sucking up power.
I wrote: Well, not quite: I worked for some Indians, and all the management jobs went to Indians -- but that just proves my point.
You wrote: Baseless arguments bordering FUD. I have a template for that: I worked for $RACE-YOU-HATE$ and all the promotions went to $RACE-YOU-HATE$.
Actually, it isn't baseless. It is rooted in something called "experience" and "reality". This is something that other folks have confirmed -- ask a sample of employees that work at Nasa with Indians if Indians do this sort of crap. You'll find out they do.
A guy I know who worked with a lot of Indians at a research institution noted the following:
Indian profs took the research money from their non-Indian students, and funneled it to other Indians.
Indians appropriated other people's work, and blatantly lied about it.
The best was that someone copied this guys drawings, which he'd produced by constructing a special tool. When he confronted the Indian about him copying his drawings, the Indian claimed this guy had actually copied the Indians work.
So this guy kept track of how many Indians were dishonest, and how many were decent. Of approximately a dozen, one Indian was decent. The others behaved dishonestly.
If one out of a dozen bears was harmless, but the other 11/12 were violent, you'd be quite rational to conclude that if you see a bear, you'd better be careful.
What you call "stereotyping" others call "learning" and "experience".
Oh Man! That is amazing. He actually publicly accused Shatner. That's great.
I think Takei was the best on Stern when they have the Schwarzenegger impersonator, and Takei was trying to get him to agree to sign the gay marriage bill. It was so amazing to see how cool he stayed, how nice he was, even as the Arnold impersonator insulted and degraded him so much -- because he really wanted the governor to sign that bill.
Takei seems like a very, very nice and decent guy. I simply couldn't believe the mocking and abuse he put up with -- esp. the cracks about the internment camps that the impersonator made.
Judaism is the religion of Israel -- the nation, or tribe of Israel.
Jews themselves care more about tribal membership than the religion.
That's why the Lubavitchers are happy to talk to any Jews they can -- he's one of the tribe, he just needs to behave properly. But the goyim? To hell with them.
Similarly, and atheist Jew can go to Israel, claim his citizenship (all Jews are already citizens, the paperwork is a formality), get weapons and move to the West Bank to help redeem the land.
The fact that he's an atheist is immaterial -- a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
The population average matters tremendously. As you point out, it is the extreme cases that matter. But if the population average is just a bit higher, your percentage of the extreme cases is much higher. This is due to the Gaussian-shaped distribution of IQ.
E.g. how many black rocket scientists do you know? There's a handful. How many Jewish rocket scientists? Way more than their 2-3% of the population would suggest should exist. How many Jewish lawyers or doctors? Way more than 2-3%. Of course, many Jews do crappy jobs. But the higher average IQ means they fill the IQ-loaded jobs.
Well, I wish you'd been there, and then we'd be able to talk about it.
As it is, I just have to go with what I experienced.
I don't think my response is childish or racist -- ask anyone else who has worked with ethnocentric people like Indians running things -- you'll probably hear something more "childish, racist and bitter".
The fact that in-group variation in IQ (or other traits) is greater than the differences between groups isn't as important as you imply.
E.g. Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of 133, vs. 100 for Europeans. As a result, there are a lot more Jews who do well in IQ-loaded professions. You see this in who gets Nobel prizes.
This is why I said that you notice the differences in the extremes: there are a lot more Ashkenazis with IQs of 140 (as a percentage of the population) than there are blacks or Europeans with IQs of 140.
The difference in average (of the groups) IQ is very important. It explains, for instance, why there are only a few great black chess players.
I mean "European" here in the racial sense -- I don't count some North African who immigrated to Europe as "white".
From what I've seen, the Indians are really blatant about favoring their group. They don't even try to hide it. That's just how they are.
No wonder the Afghans say that "the ways of Allah are mysterious -- he had hell, but then he created India."
Also, non-white on non-white racism -- e.g. Chinese on black, or black on Mexican -- tends to be much uglier than white-on- racism. More blatant and nasty.
That was the Chinese governmnent that paid for him.
Not the American government -- which among other things, gives poor black kids breakfast, so that they'll get a good meal, and hopefully do well in school.
White Americans, and Europeans in general, are not very ethnocentric. We tend to be meritocratic, and society has been especaially meritocratic since the 1950s. That means we aren't very racist, either individually or as a society.
We are so non-ethnocentric it is easy to forget it, especially given that some people are continually accusing us of racism.
But, it is always good to make comparisons. E.g. in India or China, who you know, and to whom you are related, is critical. It is hard to get ahead without being in the right group. That's especially true in India.
That's also true -- more true -- in Africa, where tribal association is very important. There are countries where one tribe runs the show -- e.g. Nigeria. Woe unto him born into a weak, powerless tribe, especially if there happens to be oil under your feet.
That's also true in the Arab world. If you are a from a Shiite clan, expect the Sunnis to give you hell. In Iraq, that meant that 20% ran the whole country, because they were Sunni Arabs, and the others were either Kurds, marsh Arabs, Turkmen, Shiites, etc. It is important to keep in mind that in most parts of the world, the religion you worship corresponds to your tribe -- hence this isn't so much sectarian violence, as ethnic violence. Like in Ireland -- Protestants aren't Irish who converted (for the most part) to a different religion, but people who immigrated from Scotland. They are from a different gene pool.
Ireland, due to the conflicts, is more ethnocentric than Great Britain, or America. This is a typical social identity effect: put groups in conflict, and they'll start sorting each other out, picking on the other group and so on. That's natural animal behavior. As a result, if you want to get ahead, you'd better be related to the right crowd.
That's true in Israel too, a very ethnocentric place. You'd better be in the right group, depending on what you want to do. E.g. want to succeed in an area where Sephardim succeed? Better be Sephardi.
I've never seen anything like this in America. I've worked at a number of companies, and always the issue was just, "can you do the work," and not, what genes do you have. Well, not quite: I worked for some Indians, and all the management jobs went to Indians -- but that just proves my point.
It is true that blacks haven't been prevalent among the programmers, but I think isn't explained by racism. This is a very controversial view, but supported along the following reasoning: various things, like height or reaction time are different among different ethnic groups. To the extent that IQ is a hereditable phenomenon, different groups have different average IQs, just as we have different average heights. That explains the outcomes. This is especially true, given all the money the government has poured into trying to get brown and black people to succeed in science (and why didn't they pour money into helping Chinese succeed in basketball?).
OK, thanks for the tip. I get why the farmers exist --- it doesn't pay to get rid of them. The only benefit you get is the joy of "punishing cheaters" -- altruistic punishment -- which, of course, costs you time and effort to do the punishing.
Sure -- but we aren't trying to make a robotic soldier, or anything close to it.
We do aerospace -- the cruise missles and satellites.
So far, we haven't done robots that you see before they kill you.
We are almost their, with the predator drones -- but again, that's aerospace.
If we had killer robots, instead of sending in a bomb to blow up an apartment with jihadis, we'd send in a swarm of small robots, that would attack them up close. Many, fewer civilian casualties, no US casualties.
Slashdot Mirror
Who said I think it is OK?
Also, I run OpenBSD. Good luck hijacking my PC.
In that case, it is the contract that is illegal.
But you could have all the other elements -- consideration, for instance, and mutual benefit.
Whether or not someone will willingly agreeing to something is a different issue from whether or not the contract is of a legal or illegal nature.
Slavery is a good example -- at one point, someone could have sold themselves into slavery. And then suddenly that contract might be determined to be illegal, if slavery was banned.
180Solutions is always right on the line. They used to play really dirty, until it was illegal.
Then they did the arms-length thing: blame the affiliates, but encourage them to break the law.
I don't see how their behavior is any different from companies that mislead people as to what they are buying or signing (e.g. I'll give you a check for a dollar -- but it is also a contract that switches your long distance service to may carrier).
Some people are stupid. Our laws assume that people are responsible and that if they sign a contract, that is them willingly singing a contract.
I suspect the problem is that some people are so stupid that they aren't really responsible, and that is especially the case when it comes to computers running spyware.
I thought that Paul Graham and some other folks, solved this problem with Bayesian filtering.
Paul Graham has a famous essay, A Plan For Spam: http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
We dont' have gas, and much of our power is from hydro.
So I've got no choice if I want the heat, and thankfully, hydro doesn't cause much trouble (unless you are a migratory fish).
Transformers are equally culpable of silently sipping power.
I've read that 10% of a households energy use is from transformers.
That they use power is obvious if you look at the electrical diagram -- the things have a loop through which current travels. There is some waste power that gets lost.
Do we all go around the house unplugging our transformers, to stop from using power? I doubt it.
I figure that my electronic devices, with their "waste heat" are actually heating my place. I don't see that as a bad thing -- I want the heat.
If, on the other hand, I had to run AC to cool down the building, then I'd be peeved at them sucking up power.
The page is OK -- it loads super-fucking-fast, works with lynx.
It is ugly. I think that this website, which has similar pages, looks a lot better (never mind the content -- it is neocon):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/browse
Craigslist will kill E-bay, eventually.
Exactly. Isn't that the stuff that can make port (or other wines) smell/taste like chocolate, cherry, vanilla, etc.?
That is a truly amazing experience -- everyone should go in with some friends on a $200+ bottle of port, just once in their lives, to experience this.
I belive the machine may work -- afterall, we are just talking chemistry here. Wine is a chemical, not some magical stuff. I wish him luck!
Dear Anonymous Coward,
I wrote: Well, not quite: I worked for some Indians, and all the management jobs went to Indians -- but that just proves my point.
You wrote: Baseless arguments bordering FUD. I have a template for that: I worked for $RACE-YOU-HATE$ and all the promotions went to $RACE-YOU-HATE$.
Actually, it isn't baseless. It is rooted in something called "experience" and "reality". This is something that other folks have confirmed -- ask a sample of employees that work at Nasa with Indians if Indians do this sort of crap. You'll find out they do.
The BASIS is reality. It isn't "BASELESS".
A guy I know who worked with a lot of Indians at a research institution noted the following:
Indian profs took the research money from their non-Indian students, and funneled it to other Indians.
Indians appropriated other people's work, and blatantly lied about it.
The best was that someone copied this guys drawings, which he'd produced by constructing a special tool. When he confronted the Indian about him copying his drawings, the Indian claimed this guy had actually copied the Indians work.
So this guy kept track of how many Indians were dishonest, and how many were decent. Of approximately a dozen, one Indian was decent. The others behaved dishonestly.
If one out of a dozen bears was harmless, but the other 11/12 were violent, you'd be quite rational to conclude that if you see a bear, you'd better be careful.
What you call "stereotyping" others call "learning" and "experience".
Oh Man! That is amazing. He actually publicly accused Shatner. That's great.
I think Takei was the best on Stern when they have the Schwarzenegger impersonator, and Takei was trying to get him to agree to sign the gay marriage bill. It was so amazing to see how cool he stayed, how nice he was, even as the Arnold impersonator insulted and degraded him so much -- because he really wanted the governor to sign that bill.
Takei seems like a very, very nice and decent guy. I simply couldn't believe the mocking and abuse he put up with -- esp. the cracks about the internment camps that the impersonator made.
Stern's show is amazing!
George Takei is amazing. Now he's on Stern, where he came out of the closet.
i ns/2006/01/13/1137118970418.html
Stern asked him what positions he likes, and Takei went into it. Here's some proof: http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/stern-age-beg
Really funny. Takei sounds like a very earnest guy though -- it is great he gets to work on this stuff.
Is a white South African, or white Zimbabwean, who immigrates to the USA, an "African American"?
I think so.
Judaism is the religion of Israel -- the nation, or tribe of Israel.
Jews themselves care more about tribal membership than the religion.
That's why the Lubavitchers are happy to talk to any Jews they can -- he's one of the tribe, he just needs to behave properly. But the goyim? To hell with them.
Similarly, and atheist Jew can go to Israel, claim his citizenship (all Jews are already citizens, the paperwork is a formality), get weapons and move to the West Bank to help redeem the land.
The fact that he's an atheist is immaterial -- a Jew is a Jew is a Jew.
The population average matters tremendously. As you point out, it is the extreme cases that matter. But if the population average is just a bit higher, your percentage of the extreme cases is much higher. This is due to the Gaussian-shaped distribution of IQ.
E.g. how many black rocket scientists do you know? There's a handful. How many Jewish rocket scientists? Way more than their 2-3% of the population would suggest should exist. How many Jewish lawyers or doctors? Way more than 2-3%. Of course, many Jews do crappy jobs. But the higher average IQ means they fill the IQ-loaded jobs.
Here is a nice, mathematical analysis of the phenomenon:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/fuzzy.htm
Here's a nice piece on Jews at CUNY:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/iq.htm
oops -- made a mistake. The average Ashkenazi IQ is only 116, not 133.
Well, I wish you'd been there, and then we'd be able to talk about it.
As it is, I just have to go with what I experienced.
I don't think my response is childish or racist -- ask anyone else who has worked with ethnocentric people like Indians running things -- you'll probably hear something more "childish, racist and bitter".
The fact that in-group variation in IQ (or other traits) is greater than the differences between groups isn't as important as you imply.
E.g. Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of 133, vs. 100 for Europeans. As a result, there are a lot more Jews who do well in IQ-loaded professions. You see this in who gets Nobel prizes.
This is why I said that you notice the differences in the extremes: there are a lot more Ashkenazis with IQs of 140 (as a percentage of the population) than there are blacks or Europeans with IQs of 140.
The difference in average (of the groups) IQ is very important. It explains, for instance, why there are only a few great black chess players.
I mean "European" here in the racial sense -- I don't count some North African who immigrated to Europe as "white".
From what I've seen, the Indians are really blatant about favoring their group. They don't even try to hide it. That's just how they are.
No wonder the Afghans say that "the ways of Allah are mysterious -- he had hell, but then he created India."
Also, non-white on non-white racism -- e.g. Chinese on black, or black on Mexican -- tends to be much uglier than white-on- racism. More blatant and nasty.
If you look in the dictionary, you'll see that Ireland is an island, and there are two recognized governments on it -- the Republic and Great Britain.
It was OK for me to say the conflicts are in Ireland. It was less specific than saying Northern Ireland, but so what.
You are quite offensive calling me twat. I hope you get modded down for that. Or have a nasty run-in with one of these -- or even worse, one of these
That was the Chinese governmnent that paid for him.
Not the American government -- which among other things, gives poor black kids breakfast, so that they'll get a good meal, and hopefully do well in school.
White Americans, and Europeans in general, are not very ethnocentric. We tend to be meritocratic, and society has been especaially meritocratic since the 1950s. That means we aren't very racist, either individually or as a society.
We are so non-ethnocentric it is easy to forget it, especially given that some people are continually accusing us of racism.
But, it is always good to make comparisons. E.g. in India or China, who you know, and to whom you are related, is critical. It is hard to get ahead without being in the right group. That's especially true in India.
That's also true -- more true -- in Africa, where tribal association is very important. There are countries where one tribe runs the show -- e.g. Nigeria. Woe unto him born into a weak, powerless tribe, especially if there happens to be oil under your feet.
That's also true in the Arab world. If you are a from a Shiite clan, expect the Sunnis to give you hell. In Iraq, that meant that 20% ran the whole country, because they were Sunni Arabs, and the others were either Kurds, marsh Arabs, Turkmen, Shiites, etc. It is important to keep in mind that in most parts of the world, the religion you worship corresponds to your tribe -- hence this isn't so much sectarian violence, as ethnic violence. Like in Ireland -- Protestants aren't Irish who converted (for the most part) to a different religion, but people who immigrated from Scotland. They are from a different gene pool.
Ireland, due to the conflicts, is more ethnocentric than Great Britain, or America. This is a typical social identity effect: put groups in conflict, and they'll start sorting each other out, picking on the other group and so on. That's natural animal behavior. As a result, if you want to get ahead, you'd better be related to the right crowd.
That's true in Israel too, a very ethnocentric place. You'd better be in the right group, depending on what you want to do. E.g. want to succeed in an area where Sephardim succeed? Better be Sephardi.
I've never seen anything like this in America. I've worked at a number of companies, and always the issue was just, "can you do the work," and not, what genes do you have. Well, not quite: I worked for some Indians, and all the management jobs went to Indians -- but that just proves my point.
It is true that blacks haven't been prevalent among the programmers, but I think isn't explained by racism. This is a very controversial view, but supported along the following reasoning: various things, like height or reaction time are different among different ethnic groups. To the extent that IQ is a hereditable phenomenon, different groups have different average IQs, just as we have different average heights. That explains the outcomes. This is especially true, given all the money the government has poured into trying to get brown and black people to succeed in science (and why didn't they pour money into helping Chinese succeed in basketball?).
I read that due to the low costs of Mexican labor, farmers are de-automating. A combine costs a lot more in upkeep/fuel than Mexicans.
So the Japanese are going the way of the robot. We are taking the way of cheap labor.
I read that as part of this, the US companies that make the robots are hurting big.
OK, thanks for the tip. I get why the farmers exist --- it doesn't pay to get rid of them. The only benefit you get is the joy of "punishing cheaters" -- altruistic punishment -- which, of course, costs you time and effort to do the punishing.
Sure -- but we aren't trying to make a robotic soldier, or anything close to it.
We do aerospace -- the cruise missles and satellites.
So far, we haven't done robots that you see before they kill you.
We are almost their, with the predator drones -- but again, that's aerospace.
If we had killer robots, instead of sending in a bomb to blow up an apartment with jihadis, we'd send in a swarm of small robots, that would attack them up close. Many, fewer civilian casualties, no US casualties.